


so long as man can turn away his eyes from the flaming spectacle

by diktynna



Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-17
Updated: 2015-02-17
Packaged: 2018-03-13 11:26:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3379787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diktynna/pseuds/diktynna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>There are no benevolent forces in the universe. Even the Aegis is about rules and rights and enforcing those. Property law is property law, and the population of the Earth belongs to the matriarch of the Abrasax family, no matter what name her current body goes by.</i>
</p>
<p>The survivors in the aftermath of a Harvest, and the tales that they tell of Seraphi Abrasax.</p>
            </blockquote>





	so long as man can turn away his eyes from the flaming spectacle

There’s a secret about the Harvests that no one will ever, ever tell you. It has nothing to do with the slaughter. It has nothing to do with eternity encased in glass for those who can pay the right price.

Humans are clever and humans are stupid. They hide and they pray, and they believe if they do both enough for long enough, hard enough, they will not be found. Even though their technology is laughably simple compared to that of the Abrasax Corporation, they still believe, in their little minds, that they are special, that they will survive this purge, this fire from heaven.

In the end, some of them are right. Not many, but some. Nowhere near enough to count as a viable percentage of a population of ten billion people. Not even enough to be considered a town. In the end, some two hundred people will be right about their degree of specialness and that they, personally, have been spared by some benevolent force in the universe.

There are no benevolent forces in the universe. Even the Aegis is about rules and rights and enforcing those. Property law is property law, and the population of the Earth belongs to the matriarch of the Abrasax family, no matter what name her current body goes by. Those two hundred people are hers to do with as she wishes.

She is god to them, mother and destroyer, that sacred combination that people have attempted to divide, countless times, into a strict duality throughout history. She is the Mother Goddess that drifts through history, capable of immense love and immense hate, stalwart and true despite action taken to squash her down.

Cults are very useful things, and those two hundred people? Are so very grateful. In time, they will disappear into the military, into bureaucracy, into brothels and testing facilities and the multitude of servants keeping the estates in working order. There is nothing they wouldn’t do for the woman who saved them, for the family that has allowed them to live.

The tales of the matriarch of the Abrasax family spread out across the universe, whispers of her greatness and generosity. Over time, the whispers start to fade as those people start to die out. Some of them rise far enough to afford the lives of a hundred thousand of the people who lived on the same planet as them. They simply die later.

By then, it’s on to another planet, on to another Harvest, and onto another two hundred people spared by a member of the Abrasax family, smiling that closed-lip smile that doesn’t reach their hard eyes that shine like the gemstones scattered over their shoulders.


End file.
